Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnberg]

My Lords, I am afraid that my name is not attached to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. I was not quick enough to get in the queue of people who wanted to get their names on this, but I have been banging on a little about the disappearance of the HPA and the need for an independent body just as is described in this amendment—and even better in the other amendments seeking a special health authority. I suppose we are not likely to get that this evening but we may be able to get somewhere with Amendment 162.

What I find very difficult to understand is why the Secretary of State would want to take this on. Having chaired the PHLS and then the HPA and now Public Health England, which is an even bigger body with even more responsibilities and a whole host of practical activities—scientific, laboratory, epidemiological—why would a government department want to take that on? Is it that it did not trust the HPA? Is it to save money? Did the HPA in some way fail? What is the rationale for the Secretary of State to want to take it inside the department and lose that level of independence, that ability to look outside and that facility to take advice from independent chairmen and members of the board?

If the department wants this job done—and I do not doubt that it wants this job done very well indeed—it cannot expect to do it as well within the department as an agency that was directly responsible and directly answerable to the Secretary of State but had that degree of independence that would give confidence to the public and the profession that it was doing a good job. I find it difficult to imagine why that cannot be done, and I do not understand the reasons why not.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I also did not put my name on this amendment because there was not enough space for more than four names.

I have a concern that the Health Protection Agency itself may have been a bit like a prophet in its own land and that it was not recognised fully until now, when we see its disappearance, just how important the work is that it has been doing, both nationally and internationally. Apart from already earning money for the UK, its potential to carry on doing so in the emerging large economies in other parts of the world and expanding its scientific input is enormous. It has the role not only of public health but of anticipating what threats may emerge in the future, particularly in the range of toxins that it looks at and studies.

These amendments seem to solve a problem that we have all heard about. We have all been at meetings; we have all met with the relevant people. I really hope that we will not just get told that this cannot happen for a variety of reasons. The amendments seem to be solving a problem that has only been created as a result of these changes. I cannot see that there is anything to lose, except that if the amendments are not accepted we might lose the capacity to earn international research funds in the future.